公民不应该对自己的治理方式有发言权吗?或者这只是极端主义、分裂和战争的配方?我们需要一个拥有绝对权力的统治者来维持和平吗?本周我们将讨论托马斯·霍布斯以及他对公民身份和国家的看法。

Hobbes famously said that life in the state of nature would be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” By “state of nature,” he meant life without any kind of government. Essentially, he’s saying that weneedto be governed if our lives are going to be remotely bearable.

But is he right to think that? Let’s start with the first part of that claim, that life would be “solitary.” This seems obviously wrong. Humans are naturally social creatures and, like other social animals who live in the state of nature, we would probably live in small family or tribal groups without a state. Indeed, before government ever existed, isn’t this exactly how we lived?

Sure, humans like to fight with one another. But is that fact enough to defend Hobbes’ claim that without the state to govern us, life would be “brutish and short”? That sounds like in the state of nature we’d constantly be in danger of being attacked and killed by other humans. But humans are not only social animals, we’re cooperative animals too. We band together to get things done, we work with one another to create stuff we can’t create alone. Can’t we concede that we might fight sometimes, but also insist it’s usuallynotto the death?

这并不是说国家的强制权力——以盗窃、攻击和谋杀等罪名逮捕和监禁违法者的能力——不能阻止人们做出恶劣的行为。但这并不一定意味着如果没有国家的强制力量来拘留和惩罚，我们就会到处试图杀死对方。

I’m not trying to pay too rosy a picture of human nature here. Of course, I lock my doors at night time precisely because I don’t trust other people to always behave appropriately. But Hobbes’ paints an overly pessimistic picture of human nature, like without the state we’d live short, brutal lives.

Hobbes’ picture of government is similarly extreme. It’s possible to believe thatsomekind of state is necessary to maintain order and peace, but Hobbes advocates for an absolutist state, one where there’s a single ruler who has all the power. As citizens in this state, our job is just to obey the supreme ruler. It sounds like life in Hobbes’ ideal state is what would be nasty and brutish! Citizens would be nothing more than obedient subjects of a monarch, or other absolute ruler, and we’d have no say in how we are governed.

So why did Hobbes think that a sovereign with absolute power was the only way to maintain peace and stability? And what is the relevance of Hobbes' thinking for the modern political state? Tune in to this week’s show to find out!